The present disclosure relates generally to message presentation, and more particularly to conversation graph pruning.
Social networking services allow users to author and share messages with multiple users. For example, a first user can author and publish a message for other users to read. The messages can be any of a variety of lengths which may be limited by a specific messaging system or protocol. For example, a short messaging service protocol typically limits messages to 140 characters in length.
Users interested in viewing messages authored by a particular user can choose to follow the particular user. A first user can follow a second user by identifying the second user as a user the first user would like to follow. After the first user has indicated that they would like to follow the second user, the first user will be provided with messages authored by the second user. Users can choose to follow multiple users. Users can also respond to messages and thereby have conversations with one another. Both unidirectional (e.g., follower/followee) and bidirectional (e.g., friendship) relationships may exist, depending on the type of network.
A conversation consists of a root message, messages in reply to the root message, messages in reply to the messages in reply to the root message, etc. A conversation graph is a data structure which includes all messages in a conversation. Users can view an entire conversation based on messages included in the conversation graph. Messages in the conversation can be displayed to a user in a variety of ways. For example, all messages in a conversation can be displayed in a list ordered based on the time each message was sent. However, when a conversation comprises a large number of messages, the number of messages displayed can be very large and may overwhelm the user.